Blanche
by EmmBee
Summary: It began as simple rebellion. If I had any premonition of how far people would take my story, I wouldn’t have disobeyed my parents in the first place. "Snow White" oneshot.


It began as simple childhood rebellion. If I had any premonition of how far people would take my story, I wouldn't have disobeyed my parents in the first place.

My name is Blanche. I was born to the Queen of Honnaleigh, where tradition dictates that the princesses are named after colors. My biological mother didn't know, of course, how much trouble the name Blanche, which means white, would ultimately cause me.

My biological mother died shortly after I was born, and my father soon married again. The popular rendition of my story tells the facts correctly in those ways, but that is where the truth gets screwed up with the fiction. First of all, I was not wished for because my biological mother pricked her finger with a needle. In fact, according to my father, my biological mother never once handled a needle and thread. I was conceived, as most babies are, out of my parents' desire for procreation and the Honnaleian law of marital consummation. Secondly, my face is not an unhealthy shade of white, as people have me made out to be, nor are my lips red as the blood my biological mother supposedly dripped on her embroidery. My hair, too, is not black, but actually a dark seal brown. When I look at myself in the mirror, I can legitimately consider myself beautiful, but I am not what the story makes me out to be—that is, unhealthily paper white, with flaming red lips and raven-black hair. Thirdly, my step-mom was not a wicked woman. She treated me as her daughter, and I ran away. But perhaps this story, as most others, would be best understood if I were to start at the beginning.

As I've already explained, my biological mother died shortly after I was born, and my father soon remarried. My step-mother, who was my mom in all ways that mattered, raised me to be a responsible person, teaching me that one must never cry over spilt milk, but only if one does not clean it up after spilling it. I was a bit wayward as a child, but my mom rebuked and instructed me in a manner far kinder and gentler than my father said his first wife ever would have. "Blanche," she had asked me one memorable day when she discovered all her apples eaten and the cores strewn across the floor, "did you make this mess?"

I, a small child at the time, had strenuously denied it, despite the sticky apple juice smeared across my face.

My mom punished me by having me clean up the floor and wipe the apple juice off the walls; she did not allow me to call for a servant. "I'm not upset about the apples," she had told me. "I'm just angry that you lied to me."

I had cleaned up the room, and this incident is probably were the myth about my being enslaved by my step-mother came from.

When I was sixteen, my mom and father began to arrange for my marriage to the prince across the Sea. His name was Prince Fleur of Aridon. That's what everyone always called him: Prince Fleur of Aridon, as though his title and country were a part of his given name. Before even meeting him, I felt sorry for him. To be a prince with such a bulky name, plus the fact that his given name meant flower—the poor royal must have had it hard. Despite my pity, however, for the young man, I was not looking forward to meeting him. I knew what my parents wanted of me, why they were so adamant about me getting to know Prince Fleur of Aridon. Honnaleigh is a small country, defended only by a mountain range to the north and the huge Talthan Sea to the south, east, and west. My parents were worried about attacks from the much larger countries to the east and hoped that, by arranging a marital alliance with Aridon—one of those larger eastern countries—invasion could be avoided. I respected their need to keep Honnaleigh safe from the larger countries. But I didn't like that they were using me to do it. I felt like a pawn in one of their chess sets, disposable, if perhaps useful. I knew that my parents were, once Prince Fleur of Aridon and his royal entourage arrived, going to thrust us together at every opportunity; I also had the feeling that Prince Fleur of Aridon's parents had been giving to him as detailed instructions as I'd received about what he was to do when he was with me. I was not looking forward to his arrival.

He came, of course. Prince Fleur of Aridon and his entourage came, just four days shy of my seventeenth birthday. He looked a sweet-enough kid, with soft, light brown hair, puppy-dog brown eyes, and a cute face not fully grown out of his baby fat. No one had bothered to mention to me that he was only just past his thirteenth birthday. I supposed my parents had figured age was immaterial to marital alliances.

Prince Fleur—only to his face did I ever hear his country dropped from his name—was a perfectly nice child, polite, kind, and surprisingly witty for his age. By the day of my seventeenth birthday, I found myself fond of the boy. I started thinking of him as the little brother I never had. But when he went down on one knee and asked me to marry him, I panicked. One just does not marry one's little brother!

My father was incensed by my refusal. "Blanche, you will marry Prince Fleur, or so help me…!" he shouted. He was the only person in my family who ever threatened any sort of violence against me, and his wasn't even a full-blown threat. There was, needless to say, no huntsman, nor any command for my heart to be removed from my body. These details were probably made up to elaborate on what was really a loud, but fairly uninteresting, father-daughter moment.

I was stupid with fear about marrying Prince Fleur and angry about the shouting by then, and I took the only option that I felt I had: I ran away. I ran as far and as fast as I could, taking nothing with me except the brainless notion that this was the only way to avoid marrying a thirteen-year-old prince. It turned out to be the worst mistake of my life.

By the next day, I was tired of running and fell asleep in the woods, about thirty miles from the castle. When I woke up again, I found myself staring into the hard, beady eyes of seven ugly men dressed in animal skins. "Look, Clen," one of them said. "The girl is awake."

The ugliest of the men gave me a look that made me feel dirty down to my bones. "Stand up, sugar," he ordered, drawling the word sugar like he was thinking about violating me. He had thick, leather-brown skin, short fingernails, and yellowish teeth.

I stood. I was a full head taller than any of the men, but I was surrounded, outnumbered, and terrified. No one had ever talked to me the way the one man did, and his mocking, vile tone sickened my stomach.

"You can call me Clen," the ugliest man told me with an air of fake graciousness. "These are my brothers: Clive, Claude, Carn, Clas, Ctaz, and Oliver." Clen pointed to each brother as he said the name. I lost track of who was who; they were all so ugly. "Perhaps you've heard of us. We are the Swithen brothers. And you, pretty doll, are coming home with us."

I had no choice but to follow, because one of them—not Clen—drew a long knife. He didn't point it at me, but he was cleaning his teeth with a gleam in his eye that suggested he wasn't above using it as more than a toothpick.

I can figure out how people could misconstrue or romanticize most of my story, to make it prettier or more exciting. But the one thing I do not understand is where the idea of the helpful little dwarves came from. The Swithen brothers, although it is true that they were short, were anything but helpful, to me or to anyone else. Far from it—they proceeded, upon reaching the thatched-roof shack they called a house, to enslave me. I cleaned their house, cooked their meals, washed their clothes. Other things happened to me there, but I won't mention those, as they are best left unsaid.

I was in the Swithens' shack for a long time. How long, I don't know. But I do know that I had turned a touch crazy, and it was this insanity that eventually led Clen and his brothers to stop caring much about what I did. I liked to walk in the apple orchard about a mile away from the shack. It was a grove that had been left untended for years, and the trees, knarled and unpruned, never had any fruit on them.

Or so I thought. One day while walking, trying to escape from the horror I had experienced the night before, I saw an apple on one of the twisted tree branches. Apples had always been a favorite food of mine, so I plucked it and bit into it.

I choked. There was no deadly poison, no scheming step-mother, no magic mirror. I simply choked on the bite of apple. Not that I felt sad at all at the prospect of dying; death seemed a lovely, peaceful escape from the horrible Swithen brothers.

Obviously, I did not die. But there was no kiss to revive me. I was (so I've been told) found, breathing only just enough to keep my alive, and the piece of apple was dislodged by one well-placed smack on the back.

My rescuer, I was shocked to learn, was none other than Prince Fleur of Aridon, who had happened to ride into the orchard looking for something delectable to munch on and found me instead. I was away from home a long time, I realized, long enough for the little boy of thirteen I had known to grow up into a handsome young man of almost-seventeen. And, while the years had changed me irrevocably, Prince Fleur was still as polite, kind, and surprisingly witty as he had been when he was little. Besides, he offered an escape from the Swithens that was even more lovely and peaceful than death.

My mom and father were invited to the wedding. After a few meetings with a resident witch, I sent the brothers a present: red-hot shoes that forced them to dance until they dropped dead. Clen Swithen and his brothers cannot torment me any longer. As for me, I have been taking great care to deal with and overcome my traumatic experiences, and my husband and family have been a marvelous support for and asset to my recovery.

Many things in the popular tale about me are untrue. But there is one thing that the story gets absolutely right. At the end, it is said that I live happily ever after, and, on this point, the popular tale is correct.


End file.
